School, 40 years later
I think I’m writing this because I need to process it. I hated my middle school. It was an emotionally and often physically abusive environment for children, and I think I’m only realising now how much harm it’s done me. I’ve lived with anxiety and depression for all my adult life, and only now do I think I see where it started.
First of all, 1986 was a different time for kids in the UK. Corporal punishment was still legal in school – and didn’t the staff know it? I saw boys caned for things they obviously hadn’t done. I saw a girl slapped across the face for the sin of not singing in a music lesson. I saw kids dragged around classrooms by their hair or clothes, by grown adults who were supposed to be teaching them, not duffing them up.
And what was just as bad was the bullying. By other kids, yes, but also by teachers. PE teachers who instigated the bullying of kids for not being sporty. No French teacher ever bullied a kid for not being able to conjugate ‘avoir’, but those PE teachers were vile. Making boys play basketball naked from the waist up. Supervised showers. It was so creepy. They hid in plain sight… whatever their preferred abuse was.
We also had a teacher who would drop pens so he could have a good look at girls’ legs, but that’s another story.
I think what annoys me most is that while nobody would have believed any kids who’d spoken up, there were 30 or 40 adults in that school who absolutely could have stopped all of that. Maybe they were scared for their careers, I don’t know. But I don’t think any of them ever did a thing to protect the children they were supposed to care for.
I never thought I’d say I was glad Ofsted happened, but I can’t begin to think what they’d have made of that school. There was no meaningful learning or social development at that school, only fear. I really think it’s affected my whole life.